


soft and steadfast

by casualbird



Series: dedue week 2020 [2]
Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Domesticity, F/M, Frottage, Intercrural Sex, Mild Praise Kink, No Spoilers, Oral Sex, Post-Blue Lions Route (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), Post-Canon, Trans Female Character, crying during sex but it's chill them's tears of joy, plus-size mercie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-06
Updated: 2020-01-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:07:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22143049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casualbird/pseuds/casualbird
Summary: There is a hearth crackling away within Dedue, and with her every gentle touch, every honeyed word, every sunlit smile, Mercedes tends it.Written for Dedue Week, day two-- Home.
Relationships: Mercedes von Martritz/Dedue Molinaro
Series: dedue week 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1593229
Comments: 17
Kudos: 80





	soft and steadfast

**Author's Note:**

> dedue is fuckin living the dream

Dedue has long since laid aside his reading, settling in instead to watch Mercedes work beside him, sitting up in bed, peering down at her sewing through little gold-rimmed reading glasses.

Her silver needle flashes in the firelight, guiding pale-pink thread into a neat seam between two sections of her quilt. It’s for their bed, she’d told him, and she’s bound and determined to finish it before first snowfall.

She’s been making headway. Dedue has every confidence she’ll lay the last stitch in time, that they’ll spend their first winter in Duscur quite comfortably beneath it. It looks warm, all of its blue flannel squares overstuffed, as soft and plush and comfortable as its artisan.

Dedue reaches out from under the blankets, catches a corner between his fingers. This section is more finished—Mercedes has taken the time to embroider it with little pale rosettes, and he feels the texture of her stitches under his fingertips.

She looks away for just one second, smiling easily down at him. When she returns to her work, she starts humming a little tune.

It’s a favorite ballad of hers, a love song. Dedue almost blushes, joining in when she gets to the chorus.

When the song is finished, Mercedes ties off the end of her seam, stretches her arms, gathers everything up into the big wicker sewing basket she keeps on her nightstand.

“That’s enough for tonight,” she says sweetly, shimmying down into the pillows, her round face coming level with Dedue’s. “My hands are a little sore!”

“We can’t have that,” murmurs Dedue, taking one soft hand into his own, pressing thumbs into her palm and rolling the tension away. Mercedes sighs approval, lets her eyes slip closed, calls him, softly, _darling._

There is a hearth crackling away within Dedue, and with her every gentle touch, every honeyed word, every sunlit smile, Mercedes tends it.

When Dedue has warmed her chilled fingertips, when he has done his due diligence to every square inch of the thin skin of her hand, he kisses each of her knuckles, starts again with her left. She croons at him, murmuring little praises, reminders, again and again, of her soft and steadfast love.

After, she flexes her fingers, and a smile melts across her face like honey into tea. “Thank you very much!” she says, and her moon-round eyes blink open, and then narrow with equal parts sleepiness and--mischief? “Is there something you’d like in return?”

And Dedue laughs, a little afternoon breeze of a thing that Mercedes feels across soft knuckles.

“Is that an offer?” he asks, tone edging on wryness, “or just a rhetorical question?”

Mercedes giggles, in that way of hers, somewhere between girlish and ladylike, decorous and unfettered. Her eyes crinkle up at the edges, and Dedue is mesmerized. It’s his favorite look on her, that little strain of skin, the promise that one day, she’ll have deep lovely laugh lines to show for all the pleasures in her life.

And surely these are things she’s worked for for herself, she has broken her back to cultivate the garden that she walks in, but. It is enough for Dedue that he will have helped to make this life for her.

To be reminded that someday, against all odds, he’ll have laugh lines of his own.

He’s shaken out of his own mind by the lilt of Mercedes’ voice, steeped in a wryness of her own as she tells him of _course,_ that she couldn’t let such a _sweetheart,_ her own _husband_ go unrewarded. “One good turn deserves another, don’t you think?” she asks him, setting aside her glasses.

“Then kiss me,” Dedue breathes, “if you will.”

And she will, and she _does,_ and Dedue has no idea how even in the dry chill of Duscur she keeps her lips so plush, so soft when his always seem to be chapped. Her mouth tastes sweet when she opens for him, like milk tea and honey, and he savors it, eyes fluttering closed, limbs coming loose.

She shifts, then, closer to him until they’re lying flush, until he’s tingling with the warmth of her, with the sleek feel of her nightdress as it slips across his skin. One warm hand reaches up to pet his shoulder, teasing under the sleeve of his nightshirt, rubbing slow circles there.

Dedue sighs against her mouth, leaning into her, feeling the gentle press of their bodies. He moves his own hand, then, slowly, lighting beneath her shoulder blade, barely touching, waiting for an invitation.

Mercedes leans away a moment, nods, and Dedue can barely stand the sight of her face, her slick lips, her half-lidded eyes as she gazes at him through thick lashes. “You can touch,” she murmurs, and he shivers at the sweetness of her voice, the brush of breath against his cheek. Lays his hand on her in earnest, smooths his palm over the silky fabric that covers her back. It’s thin, almost too thin for the weather, and Dedue feels every little curve of her, every dimple of her skin as if he was touching her bare, and it thrills through him like it has every single time he’s held her since their youth.

She hums approval when Dedue’s hand sweeps slow through the valley of her waist, coming to rest and kneading at the apex of her ample hip. Huddles closer to him, there, and Dedue gives a little gasp at the feel of her thigh against him as he hardens, at the irrefutable evidence that she’s feeling the same way. Mercedes laughs, then, before kissing once more the corner of his mouth, reaching up to brush stray hair off of his forehead.

“Feeling good, Dedue?” It’s that softly sly bedroom tone of hers, half-teasing but still overflowing with sweetness, with the depthless adoration that Dedue is learning not to question.

He doesn’t answer her question as such, just ducks his head into the velvety skin of her neck, nuzzling her, murmuring her name. Kissing, suckling, but taking care not to mark her. She’s not shy about love bites, likes the feel of them, even, but it’s just...

Well. It’s not the time to worry about it, not when her soft rounded arm is reaching across Dedue’s broad chest, skimming the muscle over his ribs, clasping him close with her fingers dipping into the small of his back. And she is so _warm,_ so plush, and he can feel the steady thrum of her heart against his, through the press of her irresistible soft breasts, and there’s nothing he can do but _shiver._

Shiver, and drag his hand slowly, firmly down her thigh, smoothing over cellulite until he reaches the lace-trimmed hem of her nightdress, bunched up above her knees, and worries it gentle between his fingers.

It’s a question, and she answers it with a giggle, muffled in Dedue’s snow-silver hair. “Go on,” she urges him, “go ahead, you can.”

And there’s no answer he can think to give her beyond the curl of his fingers in the hem, the slow drag of it upward, a muffled _“my love”_ into the hollow of her collarbone.

“Hm,” she whispers, as her skirts come up around her hips, as Dedue dallies to run his fingers over her bare skin, the band of her underwear, the rivers and roads of her stretch marks. “I can’t seem to get enough of you,” she confides, shifting her hips to rub slowly, gently up against him where they are both over-warm and straining. “You’re so sweet, so _precious,_ such a _darling.”_

Dedue’s eyes squint shut, his breath starting to shake, to heave as he curls tighter around her, inhales the lavender scent of her, his hands quivering as they slip along the curve of her backside. _“M-Mercedes...”_ His hips jerk up on their own, and he tries to stay them, to marshal them into his wife’s own gentling rhythm.

Unbothered, Mercedes just strokes over his back, dragging her palm in wide, soothing circles across the soft cotton of his sleep shirt, the heat of his skin bleeding through. She hums to him, croons soft nonsense, kisses the crown of his head.

“Are you feeling needy, Dedue?” she asks, reaching up to stroke through his hair. “Would you like me to take care of you?”

He has to take a breath at that, centering, deep in his diaphragm. Mercedes works the ribbon out of his hair with the ends of her fingers, pets his head, fingertips dragging firm against his scalp.

“I want--” he says, halting, because even after everywhere they’ve been, everything they’ve done, even after she’s pledged her life to him, worn his wedding ring for four whole years, uprooted her _life_ to follow him to Duscur, it is difficult to allow himself to want of her.

And besides.

“I want,” Dedue begins again, surer this time, “to--to do for you as well.” He chews the inside of his cheek--he’s never thought himself so good with words. But Mercedes, as ever, does not mind.

She hums delight, fingers trailing to the curve of his unshaven jaw, tilting his head up so she can meet him in a giggling kiss, first on his lips, then over his cheeks, his creased forehead, the tip of his nose. 

“You’re so good to me,” she tells him, in a rush of sweet breath, impossibly fond. “You want something that will feel good for both of us? I think we can handle that.” She pulls back for a moment, flaxen hair all in her face, a gentle, considering smile on her lips.

Dedue _aches_ to kiss her just then, but lets her think. As if she really has to think about it--they’ve been making love for more than half a decade, now, are getting _good_ at it, (and Mercedes was good when they started out) but. Dedue is patient. He lets her take her time.

He only has to wait a moment before she’s cocking her head, laying it against the cool pillowcase, that smile of hers spreading, shaking apart all the pieces of his composure for what must be the millionth time.

“Alright,” she says, in that coquettish lilt of hers, like tiny bells or birdsong. “Do you remember when we made love at House Galatea? I still feel a little bad for getting busy at Ingrid’s place,” she says, with a laugh, “but that was fun, wasn’t it?”

Dedue can feel himself coloring, even more so than before--but he does remember. In a stark guest bedroom at House Galatea, everything so overwrought and dim, their bed dripping with heavy velvet curtains that seemed to have never once been shaken out... Mercedes was the brightest thing in the house that night, in all of Faerghus, in the _world._ Her skin shone in the firelight, soft and glowing rosy gold, and she’d gathered him close, clutched him to her chest. She’d guided that gorgeous cock of hers between his corded thighs, held him as he shivered at the drag of it over thin, sensitive skin...

They hadn’t made love that way since, still feeling a little sheepish about the way Ingrid’s father looked at them over the breakfast table, but the memory of it... It makes Dedue shudder, makes him _throb,_ and his only recourse is to duck his head, lay against the soft plane of Mercedes’ breast, murmur his assent into the low collar of her nightdress.

_“Dedue,”_ she whispers, into the part of his hair. “Oh, _lovely..._ If I’d have known you’d react like this, darling, I’d have brought it up again sooner!” She runs that soft hand down his neck, over his shoulder, his side, down to the band of his sleep pants, hooking fingers in and tugging playfully. “You can go ahead and get yourself undressed for me,” Mercedes instructs him, “far be it from me to make you wait!”

She pulls away from him, then, with a parting kiss to his brow, turning toward their nightstand. Dedue feels a pang at her absence, even though she is only inches away, even though he can still smell the milky soap she uses, can still feel her radiant warmth against his skin. He fumbles with his clothes, an awkward maneuver under their thick covers, but it’s manageable. A wince, though, at the drag of fabric over such sensitive skin--Mercedes coos sympathy from her side of the bed, pulling off her nightdress.

Dedue is the type of man to fold his clothes on taking them off, even his pajamas, but he’s struck by her, wholly absorbed by the curves of her body as she lifts her arms above her head, and they go forgotten. The generous slope of her waist, the soft swell of her belly, the fall of her breasts as she drags the silky fabric away. All that, and the rise in the coverlet between her ample thighs, where she’s hard for him. For _him,_ every time it’s just... It’s a heady thing, being wanted, even after all this time. It warms him through, the feeling of being desired by _Mercedes,_ of all the people in the world.

He barely even notices when she turns her head, catches him staring. She giggles, waves one hand in front of his face, cracks a smile when he startles, catches her eye.

“I have to say, I’m flattered!” She leans in, shifting back beside him where she _belongs,_ pressing a firm kiss to his cheek. “But you don’t have to just look.”

It’s all the license he needs, and Dedue’s lips are on her neck again, kissing down over her clavicle, over the silver-pink stretch marks on her breasts. He catches one pink nipple between his lips, teasing at it with his tongue the way he’s learned will make her gasp.

And she does, and it’s the most beautiful sound he’s _ever_ heard, just like it was the first time, just like it has been every time he’s heard it since. She pets his hair again, idly, teasing with her rounded, lacquered nails as he dips his head once again, kisses her belly, absently sweeping the blankets out of his way.

When his lips have made their way to the juncture of her hip, he stops, gazes up at her with eyes full of naked awe. His fingers have made their way inexorably back to her, and slip beneath the lace band of her underwear, rubbing tiny comforting circles above the point of her hipbone.

“Mercedes,” he says, and is surprised to hear himself breathless, sounding just as desperate as he feels. “May I--” and the words are a jumble in his mind, so he just. Breathes. Makes do. “With my mouth, please?”

And she’s smiling down at him, her lips curved up gentle like the crescent moon outside. “You’re so _good,”_ she tells him, as if it is an incontrovertible fact. “You ask for me so politely.”

Dedue’s heart and cock both ache for her, and his eyes slip shut, focus narrowing to just the comfort of her voice, of her skin against his.

“You’re welcome to,” she murmurs, “Dedue, lovely.”

And somehow he can’t wait to slip her panties off proper, so he just tugs them gently to the side, watches her cock come free, listing against her thigh. It’s so lovely, he’s always thought, plump and pink and smooth-skinned as the rest of her, and his mouth _waters_ for her.

So he takes her in, minding his teeth, wrapping tentative fingers around the base of her, sighing with the satisfaction. He laps at her, slowly at the underside of the crown of her cock, and her fingers tangle gently in his hair--not pushing, not directing, just a reminder that she’s there, just so he can feel the weight of her.

Dedue takes her deeper, feels her brush against his palate, and she whines for him, a sweet pitchy little cry that shivers through him like her white magic, like she’s patching up a scrape he didn’t know he’d _had._

_“So good for me,”_ she breathes, petting at the nape of his neck, steadying herself so as not to press into his mouth. And it’s unfair, always unfair what her praise does to him, but he _revels_ in it, spurred on, swallowing around her.

And he can feel her leaking against his tongue, can taste her, salty and bitter, and it really is unpleasant, but if it means he’s pleasing her... well, then it ranks among his favorites in the world. He squints his eyes shut, moaning around her, and the vibrations of his voice make her cry out, make her fingers curl through the fine hair at the back of his neck.

Her breathing is unsteady when she speaks again, though her tone is perfectly collected, unfaltering, _controlled_ in a way that just--has always made Dedue feel safe. “Darling,” she lilts, and he doesn’t have to see her face to know that she’s still smiling. “Sweetheart, you don’t want me to come for you already, do you?”

Dedue pulls back, lets her cock fall once more against the pillow of her thigh. He wipes his mouth with the back of one hand, looks sheepish up at her. The thought--the _lived experience_ of it, of Mercedes keening for him, filling up his mouth... it’s undeniably appealing, but he knows he’s got something even better on the way.

“N-no, I was simply...” He takes a moment, catches his breath. “Inspired, you might say.”

She laughs so kindly, so lovingly, so entirely without derision that it nearly shatters Dedue’s heart anyway. The hand at his neck slips down over his back, guides him up and level with her so she can kiss him, taste herself on his lips.

“Besides, lovely,” she says, against the corner of his mouth, “I can’t just keep neglecting you, now can I?”

She could. She could do whatever she wanted to him, and he’d never say a word about it. He thinks, not for the first time, not even for the _thousandth,_ that he’s completely at her mercy and he _loves_ it.

But he shakes his head for her, brushing the tips of their noses together, making her crinkle the corners of her eyes again. Her hand moves from the center of his back, from the deep black-magic scar she’d saved his life from, down across his waist, through the channel of his Adonis line to curl around his cock, stroking him leisurely, gently, with a practiced-perfect grip.

“There you are,” she whispers, under his strangled calling of her name, “precious, you’re _dripping_ for me.”

“I--I want you,” he grits out, by way of explanation. “I love you.”

“I know, sweetheart, and I love you too.” Her other hand slips out from its place under the pillow, bearing a familiar little glass bottle. “Spread your legs a little for me, won’t you?”

He does, and doesn’t protest when her hand leaves him twitching in the empty air, because he knows he’ll only have to wait a moment. And when she returns, her palm is warm and slick as it massages the soft insides of his thighs, where he’s filled out with a life of comfort, with her sweets. Dedue whines for her, and when she’s finished she rewards him with another languid stroke, making him gasp.

“Ready, darling?”

“Always,” he whispers, a little dazed, _“always.”_

And she’s faffing around just a little, putting away the oil, wiping her hands on a stray handkerchief, and he aches for her until she’s back with him, arms wrapping around him, pulling him so close against her.

She’s so _soft,_ so _warm,_ and it’s a revelation to him every time. Dedue shivers, shifts so she can hold him even tighter, drapes one arm over her waist as she hooks one plump leg around his, finally slipping home between his thighs.

Mercedes sighs, and she sounds so blissful that Dedue feels _tears_ prickling at his eyes, ducks his head into the hollow of her shoulder. She moves against him, slow at first, experimental--but she gets it perfect on her first try. Her cock feels so good against him, nudging up against such sensitive parts of him, so intimate that he could cry. And his own presses hot against her belly, leaking against her skin, and Dedue can’t help but sob against her shoulder, he just feels so _much._

“My beloved,” he babbles, muffled as he pulls her ever closer, palm falling flat against the dimples of her back to guide her rolling hips, rhythmic, soothing even as he unravels for her. “Mercedes, my--!”

“There, there,” she croons, paying no mind to the silver hairs that catch in her mouth. “I have you. You’re being so sweet for me, Dedue, so lovely and _open.”_ She sighs, then, down in her diaphragm, and he can feel the shift of it against his cock and it’s _heavenly._ “I’m proud.”

Dedue only whimpers in response, then, his hips canting up into her, and he could swear, could _swear_ he sheds a tear.

And Mercedes makes this _noise,_ so sweet and rapturous, and Dedue trembles, clings to her, wishes beyond sense that he could have her even closer. Wants to be _filled_ by her, but that’s for another time.

“Oh,” she moans out, her voice as strained, as tight as Dedue feels all over. “Oh--Dedue, _my Dedue,_ I’m almost there--will you squeeze a little tighter, darling, for me?”

He does, for her, _anything_ for her, and he feels dizzy, feels like he’s burning, as if catching fire like this is the best thing that could possibly ever happen to him. Dedue shivers with it, with her calling him _hers,_ with the feel of her trembling against him, in time with him--and it’s too much.

It’s too much, it’s _everything,_ and he spills against her belly, sobbing slack-jawed into her skin, gasping around her name. He clasps her to him, so tight he can feel his arms shaking, and for a moment he’s frightened that it’s too much, that he’ll hurt her--but she just sighs, still just as blissful as she’s been, and his body floods with relief.

“Lovely,” she whispers, “that’s so good, you can let go, Dedue, I have you...”

And she does. His body slumps against hers, still quivering, and she holds him, croons to him, pets him gentle even as she finds her own release between his thighs. Even as her breathing comes in pants, as she whimpers her pleasure, she is careful, gentle, _with_ him in every sense of the word.

They don’t let go, even as they come down, as their heartbeats slow and stabilize, fall into synchronicity once more. Dedue nuzzles deeper into the hollow of her neck, languid, leaving little kisses there as his eyes run dry, and Mercedes rubs his bare, scarred back, delicate, with fingers splayed to feel as much of him as she can.

And certainly, they are a mess, in a tangle of bedcovers, smeared with oil and sweat, with their own release, too warm even with the autumn draft. And certainly all of these things will need to be tended to, in their turn.

And certainly, when Mercedes inevitably rises to find a washcloth and a basin, when Dedue busies himself changing the sheets, they will still be safe within their home, their little cottage on the renaissant plains of Duscur.

But for the moment, clinging to each other, smiling softly, sleepily at each other, whispering sweet words in voices going hoarse--well. They are perhaps slightly more _at home_ in this moment than they will be in the next.

**Author's Note:**

> gosh! i think this might be the longest thing i've ever written in one day! (well. i wrote the veeeery beginning of it a while ago, but the rest of it was all at once.) i had an absolute blast writing it, and i hope you had fun reading it!
> 
> let me know what you think! i appreciate all the feedback i get!
> 
> also: if you're feeling so inclined, come chill with me on [twitter!](https://twitter.com/bird_scribbles)


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